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rooppal

rooppal on Hacker News

Re:Ex-Waymo engineers launch Bedrock Robotics with $80M to automate co... on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @11:06PM (#44589299)
More than just red-tape there's whitecollar processes in pre-construction that take months. Just estimating the cost of each subtrade is a process currently done by hand on blueprints (what I work on automating).

`white_collar_automation * robotics_automation = building more, cheaper`

Re:Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Us... on Friday February 28, 2025 @01:05AM (#43202223)
We don't really have plans on using user-data to train our models, since it's too much of a chicken-and-egg problem. Carbon estimating is something we had some clients talk about -- it uses the same material quantity estimation we're already doing, and is something we're really interested in (my heart is in impact-driven work). Would love the connections!
Re:Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Us... on Friday February 28, 2025 @01:03AM (#43202212)
I think parsing a whole blueprint with monolithic models is really difficult, but the constrained object detection/semantic segmentation problems are significantly more tractable. You can chain those CV models with VLMs to do things like get scale right. I'm always interested in novel HCI paradigms like voice!
Re:Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Us... on Friday February 28, 2025 @12:58AM (#43202182)
I think that's well within the realm of possibility :)
Re:Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Us... on Friday February 28, 2025 @12:56AM (#43202173)
Amazing, I saw you already connected with my cofounder over chat, looking forward to it!
Re:Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Us... on Thursday February 27, 2025 @05:23PM (#43199203)
Absolutely! That's our end-goal, to remove the painful back-and-forth of permitting. Once you solve blueprint understanding, the possibilities are enormous, from spell-check to material efficiencies, etc.
Re:Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Us... on Thursday February 27, 2025 @03:43PM (#43198294)
Thanks for such a detailed question! We're focused on material quantity estimates right now. We're using pretty generic averages for costing as our primary users (suppliers) have a way better finger on the pulse of the market and typically change the unit price anyways. We'll work on better cost accuracy though, and are looking to integrate with RSMeans or building our own scrapers.

For the second question, it really is most accurate on "fully standardized" blueprints due to our training distribution. Will work on improving that as well!

Re:Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Us... on Thursday February 27, 2025 @12:54PM (#43196691)
We've seen that suppliers do a ton of bidding and cost estimation, and are keen to be accurate (estimate too high and they lose to competitors). GCs and suppliers don't want to be too low because that potentially costs them tens of thousands of dollars.
Re:Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Us... on Thursday February 27, 2025 @12:50PM (#43196663)
I really wish BIM took off more, unfortunately most suppliers and GCs are still using blueprints (but at least have moved off paper).
Re:Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Us... on Thursday February 27, 2025 @12:49PM (#43196654)
Our focus is currently on servicing suppliers and GCs. Our models would need labels to train, so we have to source our own data.

Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Using AI

Posted by rooppal on Thursday February 27, 2025 @12:30PM
from the self-post dept.

Hi HN! We're Roop and Puneet, the founders of Bild AI (https://www.bild.ai). Bild AI uses machine learning to read construction blueprints and extract detailed material quantity and cost estimates. Here's our demo: https://youtu.be/vBDl7Mh7iEcThe problem we're tackling is the sheer manual effort that goes into generating material quantities and cost estimates from blueprints today. Contractors...

( Read More... | 40 comments | 39 points | on HN )